Ok, I completely over ate today. I assume you did too!
I'm thankful for quite a bit right now. One of which is having good friends. The ones who encourage and inspire me on a daily basis.
If you have been keeping up with my Twitter updates earlier this week, you know our household fell victim to a nasty stomach virus.
We're all feeling much better today, but when we weren't,we had a number of folks asking how we were doing and if we needed anything. Pastor Steve braved the bug and stopped by with Diet Coke, Gatorade, pop sickles, and a few other items. Our friends Tara and Candy stopped by with home made Chicken and Noodles as well as a big ole plate of cookies. Ryan Fravel stopped by just to chat and encouraged for a few hours. Did we ask them too? No. But they cared enough to look out for us. I'm sure they all had a busy schedule preparing for today's festivities.
So I want to say thank you to all of you.
Thank you friends.
Thank you church family.
Thank you co-workers.
Thank you worship teammates.
Thank you musical partners.
Thank you music fans.
You all make my world better.
jamie
¶ 11/27/2008 0 Comments
According to Hits Daily Double, the long awaited, 17 years in the making, Guns 'N Roses album ("Chinese Democracy") won't claim the expected number one spot on the Billboard 200.
That honor belongs to Kanye West.
My how times have changed....Today, past success is no longer a rock solid guarantee of a successful future. #2 is honorable, but not the numbers expected for this highly anticipated and assumed to be legendary release.
Happy Thanksgiving.
jamie
ps- Those SD Card album releases I saw at Wal-Mart today? DOOMED! No one wants to pay 30% more money for an SD card than a traditional CD. More of the failing old school music industry mindset. Trying to get the consumer to respond to their technology. They should be searching to implement technology that responds to the consumer!
¶ 11/27/2008 0 CommentsFrom Hits Daily Double:
November 26, 2008
Kanye’s the king of Thanksgiving week.West's Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam album, 808s and Heartbreak, in which he tackles the Auto-Tuner and his own inner demons, will be #1 on next Tuesday’s chart with a total that looks to be between 450-500k.
That’ll be more than enough to beat back Axl Rose and his first Guns N’ Roses album in some 15 years, Chinese Democracy, which will move around 300k, more or less, out of Best Buy outlets. And that’s including the 25k or so not counted opening week at iTunes for the Sunday release.
Ludacris’ Island Def Jam album, Theater of the Mind, looks good for 225k, followed by the other one of IDJ’s big holiday power trio, The Killers’ Day and Age, clocking in with 200k more or less.Finally, what would the turkey shoot be without Barry Manilow? The "Copacabana" guy scores 85k for his new Arista/RMG album, The Greatest Songs of the Eighties, thanks to huge QVC sales.
Coldplay’s Prospekt’s March EP on Capitol will chalk up between 75-80k, while Capitol Nashville’s Trace Adkins appears headed for the 40-45k area for his new album, X.After some Monday confusion over release dates (all three major circulars advertised the IDJ albums coming on Tuesday), the numbers seem back to normal.
Meanwhile, the market was up 6% vs. last week, down 32% vs. same week last year and now down 14% year to date. Feels like a tryptophan hangover even before the turkey is served.
There is power in Social Networking.
I applaud them for embracing it and for including it in their efforts to keep America safe.
Ya know, you can start a movement with Twitter or a Facebook group... It's not just "something fun for the kiddies". It's becoming an essential part of our communication.
-jamie
¶ 11/25/2008 0 Comments
I must be missing something here....
jamie
¶ 11/25/2008 0 Comments
The new round of White House pardons announced late last night are Mr Bush's first since March, and come less than two months before the end of his presidency.
The beneficiaries' crimes include drugs conspiracy, tax evasion, poisoning bald eagles, dumping hazardous waste, bank embezzlement and theft of government property.
John Edward Forte, a Grammy Award-winning rapper, is arguably the best known of those pardoned. He was arrested at Newark International Airport in 2000 after being found with a briefcase containing $1.4m of cocaine and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Forte, who has always protested his innocence, co-wrote and produced two songs on The Score, the Fugees' Grammy-winning 1996 album and several singers, including Carly Simon, had joined a campaign for his pardon, claiming he was not given a fair-trial.
The singer, of North Brunswick, New Jersey, will be released after serving half of a 14 year sentence.
Yes, it's a cold,rainy November day. But I'm charging through. Just like you are.
I had a bout of the worst stomach illness on Saturday/Sunday. It wiped me out to the point I stayed in bed all day Sunday except to take part in LoudHouse, our church's special youth service. I'm feeling a bit better today.
Speaking of LoudHouse, the attendance almost doubled from the last time. It's growing and it's good. I foresee hitting 100 soon. That would be another great step in confirming our church as a community church- one that truly reaches out to our neighbors.
Numbers are great, but true growth is what we should aim for.
{Christian and Andy rock the house...LoudHouse!}
Today in Spark Media world, I'm focusing on the upcoming Integrity Music release from Israel Houghton, I haven't heard the rough tracks yet, but those who have are telling me it's a monster of a record. I hope to create and execute some equally monstrous promotions for it! Catch him on tour this spring with Chris Tomlin!
Also, be sure to stop by tomorrow night's Kari Jobe video chat at revelife.com! Revelife is XANGA's Christian focused site. Kari is a worship leader at Gateway Church down in Southland,Texas. Many know her as the voice of "Revelation Song". Hope you'll stop by!
Here's the graphic I made to promote the event.
Even more promotional coolness, DecembeRadio will release a 3 song Christmas ep on iTunes tomorrow! Go check it out!
I am embarrassed to admit how much I liked the Twilight film. It was really good. There, I said it.
Thanks for reading these random thoughts. It's one of the ways I blow off steam before getting back into my work groove. Just one of the ways I use to recharge. I blog, create random graphic designs, and of course, I occasionally video blog. It all helps my day become better along the way.
Here's an early Happy Thanksgiving for you!
jamie
¶ 11/24/2008 0 Comments
Seth Godin has been my latest hero! His uncanny ability to recognize changing marketing trends along with his willingness to share ideas is, well, A great asset for myself and other marketers in this new media world.
I've always felt that fast food workers should be paid a premium wage. The employee turnover rate would be less, the overall quality would likely skyrocket and the customer would become more brand loyal. After all, food goes into the body!
In this blog,Seth riffs on the Henry Ford model of staffing his business:
¶ 11/17/2008 0 CommentsHenry Ford and the source of our fear
Henry Ford left us much more than cars and the highway system we built for them. He changed the world’s expectations for work. While Ford gets credit for “inventing the assembly line,” his great insight was that he understood the power of productivity.
Ford was a pioneer in highly leveraged, repetitive work, done by relatively untrained workers. A farmer, with little training, could walk into Ford’s factory and become extraordinarily productive in a day or two.
This is the cornerstone of our way of life. The backbone of our economy is not brain surgeons and master violinists. It’s in fairly average people doing fairly average work.
The focus on productivity wouldn’t be relevant to this discussion except for the second thing Ford did. He decided to pay his workers based on productivity, not replacement value. This was an astonishing breakthrough. When Ford announced the $5 day (more than double the typical salary paid for this level of skill), more than 10,000 people applied for work at Ford the very next day.
Instead of paying people the lowest amount he’d need to find enough competent workers to fill the plant, he paid them more than he needed to because his systems made them so productive. He challenged his workers to be more productive so that they’d get paid more.
It meant that nearly every factory worker at Ford was dramatically overpaid! When there’s a line out the door of people waiting to take your job, weird things happen to your head. The combination of repetitive factory work plus high pay for standardized performance led to a very obedient factory floor. People were conditioned to do as they were told, and traded autonomy and craftsmanship for high pay and stability.
All of a sudden, we got used to being paid based on our output . We came, over time, to expect to get paid more and more, regardless of how long the line of people eager to take our job was. If productivity went up, profits went up. And the productive workers expected (and got) higher pay, even if there were plenty of replacement workers, eager to work for less.
This is the central conceit of our economy. People in productive industries get paid a lot even though they could likely be replaced by someone else working for less money.
This is why we’re insecure.
Obedience works fine on the well-organized, standardized factory floor. But what happens when we start using our heads, not our hands, when our collars change from blue to white?
(Excerpted from Free Prize Inside)
Happy Thursday friends! Here are 3 quotes by 3 of my favorite leaders. Embrace them, adopt them, implement them. I'll do my best too!
If someone offers to sell you the secret system, don't buy it. If you need to invest in a system before you use it, walk away. If you are promised big returns with no risk and little effort, you know the person is lying to you. Every time.
-Seth Godin
There are four ways to make a million dollars. Luck. Patient effort. Skill. Risk.
(Five if you count inheritance, and six if you count starting with two million dollars).
-Seth Godin
People don't believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.
-Seth Godin
Christianity is not merely about thinking right thoughts about God, rather it is experiencing God.
-Brennan Manning
So many are living in the house of fear rather than the house of love because of so many distorted images of God.
-Brennan Manning
Jesus know what hurts us - he is the Son of Compassion.
-Brennan Manning
The problem is the average person isn’t tuned in to lifelong learning, or going to seminars and so forth. If the information is not on television, and it’s not in the movies they watch, and it’s not in the few books that they buy, they don’t get it.
-Jack Canfield
I'm a big believer in growth. Life is not about achievement, it's about learning and growth, and developing qualities like compassion, patience, perseverance, love, and joy, and so forth. And so if that is the case, then I think our goals should include something which stretches us.
-Jack Canfield
One of the things that may get in the way of people being lifelong learners is that they’re not in touch with their passion. If you’re passionate about what it is you do, then you’re going to be looking for everything you can to get better at it.
-Jack Canfield
Want more? Check out these books below-
jamie
¶ 11/13/2008 0 Comments
"Ph.D. in leadership. Short course: Make a short list of all things done to you that you abhorred. Don't do them to others. Ever. Make another list of things done to you that you loved. Do them to others. Always."
- Dee Hock
Founder and former CEO of Visa.
¶ 11/10/2008 0 Comments
Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are far more well known than Ken Olsen.
Why? I think because of one word: Vision!
Read on...
jamie
¶ 11/07/2008 0 Comments
By 1980, the Apple II and other personal computers on the market were changing the minds of bigger, older computer companies about the future of personal computing. IBM, which dominated the market for large mainframe computers, and Digital Equipment Corporation, which had been doing a booming business in what were then seen as "smaller" computers with a wide variety of applications, had been slow about seeing that PCs were the wave of the future. Indeed, Ken Olsen, the founder of DEC (whom Bill Gates had idolized as a teenager), had been debunking the PC since 1977, when he told a convention of the World Future Society,
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home."
This famously mistaken judgment meant that DEC would later have to make a massive attempt to catch up, and it eventually led to Olsen's ouster from the company.
Working away on a Friday afternoon. Taking a few minutes to post a quick blog. Today though, I just want to pass on some links of interest:
Seth Godin's blog - A must for the modern marketer.
Breitbart - A sad article on the health and future role of America's beloved Minister, Billy Graham.
iPhone as laptop wi-fi connection - It's coming soon and when it does. I am soooooo there! I could do the 'jailbreak' and have it now, but I think it would be glitch heavy. Once again, Apple leads and shows that their strategy of placing the customer experience over profits, will actually increase the profits!
Guardian in Argentina on Dec. 6th - Wow! Guardian gets to play this unique festival with an estimated audience of over 100,000! Special for me too because I am taking Christian with me - a father/son International rockin' 4 day trip!
Speaking of Christian, GSHS Marching Band King Bret Winternheimer passed on these clips from last night. He was goofing on some Celine Dion. Part 1 | Part2
Ok, I'm going to get back to it.
I may do a fresh video blog over the weekend time permitting.
Going....Going....Gone,
jamie
¶ 11/07/2008 2 Comments
Sitting here watching election coverage on Fox News and happy to see Barack Obama on the road to being elected.
I found yet another blog worthy of a repost. This time it's from "Blue Like Jazz" author Don Miller. That book has become a modern classic to many Christians these past few years. Read on as he describes his journey to supporting Obama. Great read, even if you voted McCain.
True peace-
jamie
My Journey from being a Reagan Republican to an Obama Democrat
I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church along the Gulf Coast in Texas. It was a suburban church nowhere near a bus line, protected as it were from most demographics that didn’t have our common interests. Those interests were embodied in the Republican Party, then led by President Ronald Reagan. Reagan captured our attention with an anti-communist, anti-atheist message, that was easy to understand, emboldening the American people against a clear threat , that of nuclear war and a godless communist regime. Reagan rode that same horse his entire career, even as an actor while President of the Screen Actors Guild, taking stands against blacklisted actors and directors thought to be sympathizers with communist ideology. The Democrats, on the other hand, were squishy, hard to understand, and believed life was complicated. They sounded intellectual and suspicious.
We were told that if Democrats were given power we would certainly be destroyed by nuclear weaponry, indefensible by our weak military. We were told that, if a Democrat lived in the white house, we would become a socialist nation and you would not be able to choose your own profession, drive a car that you wanted or attend a school of your preference. The government would make those decisions for you, we were told. We were taught all sorts of terrible things about the Democrats. We were told if a Democrat ever came to power the government would launch legislation that would mandate ten-percent of all public-school teachers be homosexuals. But when a Democrat came to power, none of that happened. Instead, the average family’s base-earning went up by $7,500 per year and we operated under a balanced budget. And we didn’t go to war against an enemy we couldn’t exactly find and certainly didn’t understand.
Our theology insinuated that shortly after original sin, once Adam and Eve at the apple, they registered as Democrats and went on with their lives, trying to create large governments that would enable lazy people through expensive social programs. We believed we were right and they were wrong, our ideas were Biblical and their ideas were pagan. And we did not know, exactly, who “they” were. Our church wasn’t on a bus line, and our church programs catered to a slim demographic, and so “they” didn’t come to our church. We were all of the same race, the same theological disposition. Our conservative, moral ethos transcended politics. We looked down on Methodists and Catholics because they drank and danced. In fact, when one of the elders at our church visited a western bar with his wife and another couple, presumably to participate in a line-dancing event, our pastor had him paged at the dance hall and told him to meet him in his office, immediately at the church. He was forced to resign as an elder, scolded by the pastor and later committed suicide, leaving behind a wife and three children, along with a grieving, confused church.
My mother was active, politically. She would occasionally volunteer when her Christian beliefs were threatened by government legislation. I remember her coming home late one night, having worked on a campaign opposing equal rights for same-sex partnerships. She told a thrilling story about a fellow volunteer who had a bullet-hole through his license plate, presumably put there by a lone, homosexual gunmen. And when a law was proposed banning spanking in public schools, my mother put my sister and I into the car and drove to the capital, in Austin, where we visited our state legislator. We sat on a leather couch across from his desk and my mother wagged her finger at him and, in no uncertain terms, told the man exactly what the Bible said about sparing the wand. I sat breathless and quiet. I had seen that wagging finger before and I knew what came after. I breathed again only when we were leaving the man’s office and I was assured my mother would not be taking the legislator over her knee.
Like I said, I grew up in the Reagan years. My mother, single and struggling as a secretary at an oil company, afforded a house because of a special loan available, in part, due to legislation proposed by the Reagan administration. We loved that man. I remember being in algebra class, my junior year in high school, when the principle came over the speaker system to announce there had been an accident, that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Florida. All the astronauts were lost. Those astronauts were our men, you see. They were from Houston, and lived only twenty miles from my house. There was a gasp at first, then a long minute of silence, led by the principle himself. School was dismissed, after that. We all went home and watched the footage on television. We watched all afternoon as flowers were placed along the gates at NASA, and on the sidewalks of the Astronauts homes. That night Ronald Reagan was to address the nation in the State of the Union speech. Those plans were changed, of course, and he came to us live from the Oval Office, perfectly delivering comforting lines I now know to have been written by Peggy Noonan, who borrowed her lines from the poet John Magee:
“We will never forget them,” Reagan said, “nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”
i don’t know of a political figure who could have more nobly delivered those lines. I have since longed for a statesman who understood and could employ words to unite our country during a difficult time.
This year’s Democratic National Convention was not the first political convention I attended.Sixteen years ago, then just a kid, I attended the Republican National Convention in Houston. I was not invited, but my mother found out that many of the local hotels hosted delegates, and if you went to the concierge and told them you’d like to go, many of the hotels had passes. Security was a bit different, then. And so my friend and I put on ties and carried clip boards and tried to look as professional as possible, and we made our way through security with false credentials, walked confidently through the press boxes and even sat behind the Bush family during the speeches. George W. was there, working on his fathers campaign. And Barbara in an elegant dress, and the girls, then just children. George H.W. Bush was running for reelection that year, against a governor from Arkansas who ran on the platform of change. Bush had promised the American people he would not raise taxes, but in the end had to break that promise, and that broken promise, along with an ailing economy, would cost him the election.
We didn’t like Bill Clinton. We listened to Rush Limbaugh, who told us not to think, that he would think for us, and so we bitterly groused against large government and our supposedly growing welfare state. He was a pro-choice candidate with a feminist wife who belittled women who only wanted to “stay home and make cookies.” Those were our women, we thought. And they made very good cookies.
I even attended a special camp in Colorado Springs in which we, as students (I thought we’d be campers, but we were in fact students) sat through eight to ten hours of lectures every day, covering why the Republicans were right, and why the democrats were wrong. We were taught George Guilder’s economic theory and that America’s drug problem was actually a communist infiltration. We learned there was no such thing as global warming, and the only way to build an economy was to deregulate the financial industry. (Total depravity, as a theological reality, did not apply to people in suits.) We were told a broader availability of healthcare was socialism, and we were shown images of poor communists (Rather than filthy rich and healthy Europeans) we were taught government programs would enable the lazy. We were taught to be angry, and to rise up against the secular humanist enemy that was trying to take away our way of life. And we were made to be afraid. They were out to get us. One night I had a long conversation with a young man in which I tried to convince him that bombing an abortion clinic would not be the best way to solve the problem. I went back to the camp, three-years running. The truth is I learned to think at the camp, to consider ideas to and defend positions. But my learning to think would ultimately be my demise. I wouldn’t just read conservative columnist and authors; I’d read the liberal ones too. And I’d read the British thinkers, too, in the Economist. And even more to my demise, I actually met the enemy, the students of Reed College, one of the more progressive campuses in the country. And I’d befriend Democrats, like my neighbor who is the former Governor of Oregon. I learned, then, that complicated problems could not be solved through simple solutions and emotional, even patriotic rhetoric. I also learned liberal, wishful thinking was fruitless. I learned to trust the value of numbers, hard data, and to realize nearly everybody has a motive, and power corrupts. I was shocked to find out abortion had decreased by 18% under President Clinton, and another 8% under George W. Bush (a significant slowing) and the pro-life lobby had largely ignored the economic factors that contribute to unwanted pregnancy. Bill Clinton won me over, in part for the unbelievably harsh things my Christian friends would say about him after the Monica Lewinsky scandal (and in part because the original investigation that unearthed the Lewinsky case found the President innocent of all white-water charges), but mostly because he spent the last year of his Presidency traveling to the most poor regions of America apologizing for his failure as President to help those he referred to as “the least of these.”
I didn’t realize the term “the least of these” was about to apply to my family. After more than 25 years working in the oil industry, my mother lost her entire retirement when Enron collapsed. Since then I’ve always thought we should have more regulation over companies that control enormous portions of America’s overall economy. My mother went back to school, having retired, and earned her Bachelors and Masters degrees and started teaching at the college level. She’s not teaching any longer, but still works today, though she should have retired years ago. She likes her job and her job likes her, and I’ve never heard her complain. Still, I wish Jeff Skilling would fork over the money he stole from her.
Having met the enemy, I discovered the enemy wasn’t who I thought they were. They were flawed, even as we were flawed, but they were no less patriotic, and no less good. And what’s more, they weren’t out to get us like my conservative friends had told me. I began to see, honestly, the far conservative right, the radical right (not the balanced, objective right) as being paranoid. The advertisements on conservative radio talk shows were about guns and alarm systems.
I wondered how I could be made to feel so prejudiced against Democrats. And then I took a hard look at the culture I was raised in. I realized every church I’d ever attended had been an insular community. Every church had been far off in the suburbs, off a bus line, protected from the poor and marginalized and, quite honestly, racial minorities. It’s not that these churches did this intentionally. I don’t believe that. The decisions to reside in the suburbs had to do with property value and opportunity. But the end result was an insulated existence.
I heard a lecture once at a Christian conference by a man who had moved he and his family into the hardest neighborhood in Fresno, California. He told us that he had never really cared about the problem of police apathy until one night when a bullet went through his daughter’s window and he called the police and they never came. His point was that, until we understand firsthand the urgency of a problem, we simply don’t believe it is important. Solidarity matters. And what’s more, when we live insular lives, when everybody around us believes the same things we do, has our same color skin, shares our political interests, we are easily made to believe absurdities about everybody else.
A few days ago I did an interview with a writer for The Today Show, and after the interview she asked how it was evangelicals could come to believe the many lies being spread about Barack Obama. In answer I came back to the insular nature of the suburban church. “When we’ve never met people,” I said, “we are easily manipulated into demonizing them. We are easily made to fear.” And I’ll add there has been a great deal of fear in this campaign. I just received a letter, yesterday, from a prominent church leader in Georgia that accused Michelle Obama, who I have met and found to be a lovely and humble woman, of being be a racist. This was not a small-town backwards preacher, this was a best-selling Christian author, who, honestly, should be ashamed of himself.
Last year I vowed I wouldn’t make decisions out of fear. And because of that I’ve had one of the greatest years of my life. I went to Uganda and got to meet with the man who helped write their constitution. I wrapped up an evangelism project I believe will introduce more than a million people to the gospel. I rode my bike across America. All of this stuff took some degree of risk. But when calculating those risks, I realized the only reason not to try was fear. What if I was wrong, what if I couldn’t make it, what if the project didn’t work? But none of my heroes are controlled by fear. The commandment most often repeated in scripture, in fact, is “do not fear.” Fear is often something unrighteous trying to keep you from doing something good.
They will never write stories about people controlled by fear. Stories are written (and for that matter lived) by people willing to take stands against bullies and think for themselves. A month after returning home from Washington D.C., where the bike tour ended, I got a call and was asked to deliver a closing prayer at the DNC. Many of my friends told me not to go, that it would hurt my career. I was afraid, for a second, but then knew when you were asked to go somewhere and pray, you should. Fear is always a sign that a great story is about to be written (or not, depending on how you respond.) People live the most boring lives because they stand down when they encounter fear. And so I said yes.
While in Denver I met people from the Obama Campaign. I met Joshua Dubois and Paul Monteiro, Obama’s faith-policy advisors. Paul, like me, had been a Republican until recently. He is a staunch pro-lifer who got tired of Republicans not making enough strides on the issue and was won over by the dramatic effect economic policy has on unwanted pregnancy and the bottom-up effects of economic stimulation as opposed to the conservative, supply-side policy. And Joshua spoke to me about Senator Obama’s personal faith, his commitment to close his events in prayer, his daily morning devotions and his twenty-year history of talking openly about Jesus. I didn’t need to be won over. I’d started a mentoring foundation in Portland two years before and was attracted to Obama’s message on responsible fatherhood (along with his backing of The Responsible Fatherhood Act.)
I told Joshua and Paul I had been supporting the Senator since well before he decided to run, and told them I’d help in any way during the closing months of the campaign. Since then, I’ve received more than my share of e-mails containing the most absurd lies. Barack Obama is a Marxist, a terrorist who trained with Al-Qaida, that he has a pet dragon he flies on nights when there is a full moon and that if we vote for him all the computers will stop working at midnight on new years eve. I wondered how simple a person would have to be to believe such lies.
I voted for Barack Obama (we vote early in Oregon) because I think he is right on healthcare (his plan will allow 27 million more Americans, including young, pregnant mothers to be cared for) and he is right on responsible fatherhood. I voted for Barack Obama because he will keep George W. Bush’ Faith-based Partnerships Program in play, only increasing it’s funding. I voted for Barack Obama because he has the respect of world leaders, which will be necessary to deliberate an American agenda around the world, and I voted for Barack Obama because he had the judgment to oppose the war in Iraq. I’ve taken some blows from the conservative right on my stance, but, even in public debate against McCain representatives, have not been deterred. I will not be guilted, shamed or controlled. I am not going to vote for one candidate because I have been made to fear the other. I support Barack Obama because he has beat back the dark hour of cynicism and irrational fear, and provided hope to a country closing in on itself. I believe there are great days ahead.
I will be glad tomorrow, when all this campaigning is done. Regardless of whether you agree with me or not, please vote. And thank you for considering these thoughts.
Sincerely,
Donald Miller
¶ 11/04/2008 12 Comments
The Gibson Southern Marching Titans competed in Class C Indiana State Finals yesterday.Internet chatter said they were predicted to win the top spot, but we ended up with a respectable 4th place finish. Slightly disheartening because I do think they are the best band in their class. But of course, I'm quite biased.
Those band kids are a GREAT group of young men and women who work very hard to take their talents to the next level. Our public school system is fortunate to have an elective activity that is producing top level results in the state. Hats off to Bret, Farny, Holzy, Natalie and all who push these kids to excellence.
I haven't been much of a sports aficionado since I was stricken with the music bug at 15. However, I did find it sensational to see Christian and Kaitlyn walk out onto the field where the Indianapolis Colts play. 
I'm a rock dude. Marching band is "new" to me. I think it's exciting. One thing I couldn't help but notice was the overall quality of ALL the bands I heard yesterday. Wow! Inspiring. It's made me want to have a percussion breakdown at a Guardian show or something. HAHA.
I intended to Video Blog the event but evidently I didn't push "record" on the camera like I had thought. And I kicked myself later after bragging about my remarkable footage! When I went to dump the files onto my laptop, I discovered my error. Oh well...I failed. :-)
In other news, I had an outstanding weekend just being with my family. We had a Saturday night dinner at one of my favorite restaurants "The Cheesecake Factory". I celebrated my 22nd birthday at the one in Southern California and have been hooked every since. Was glad to see one in Indianapolis. John and Laurie Barnett (plus Madison and MacKenzee) came too and we had a few hours of boisterous fun and phenomenal food!
I don't have much else to say. Have a stellar week and PLEASE don't forget to vote on Tuesday!
Over and out,
jamie
¶ 11/02/2008 0 Comments
